Vasco De Gama

Vasco da Gama extended the sea route exploration of his predecessor Bartolomeu Dias. Da Gama's voyage was successful in establishing a sea route from Europe to India that would permit trade with the Far East, without the use of the costly and unsafe Silk Road caravan routes of the Middle East and Central Asia--which were also disappearing do to the collapse of the Mongol Empire. However, the voyage was also hampered by its failure to bring any trade goods of interest to the nations of Asia Minor and India. The route was also fraught with peril - his fleet went more than three months without seeing land, and only 54 of his 170 voyagers, and two of four ships, returned to Portugal in 1499. Nevertheless, da Gama's initial journey ushered in a several-hundred year era of European domination through sea power and commerce, and 450 years of Portuguese colonialism in India that brought wealth and power to the Portuguese monarchy.